Pay Attention to the Hyphen

I didn’t go to the cemetery in Lexington, Virginia for any esoteric Tibetan ritual or ruminations about mortality. It was more like a mystery novel, a ‘where’s Waldo” puzzle trying to locate some of my wife’s relatives buried there. A cousin had instructed her to “turn right at the Stonewall Jackson statue,” but neglected the minor detail of from which direction! So we spent a good half hour wandering reading old faded headstones before the groundskeeper appeared and was able to guide us to the spot.

And so I had 30 minutes to read inscription after inscription, mostly to the tune of: Born - Died.
The numbers were different for each, the distance between them varied, but in the end, the result was the same. We arrived. We left. And something happened in-between.

And that’s what interested me. What happened in that hyphen? The numbers revealed the bookends, but what story was told in that tiny dash?

Friends, my advice is simple. Life is short and mortality is looking over our shoulder.

Do something worthy and memorable in that dash. Pay attention to the hyphen.